hms iron duke

Thursday, 21 July 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 21 July. Britain
stands at a grand strategic juncture. In a speech broadcast from 10 Downing
Street on VE Day, 8 May 1945, and entitled “Advance Britannia”, Winston
Churchill said, “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us
not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead”. Thankfully,
post-Brexit Britain does not find itself prostrate on the rocks of penury having
fought a six year war in the defence of Europe’s freedom. As Churchill made his
famous speech British debt to GDP stood at 250%, compared with a contemporary ratio
of a still too-high but manageable 89.2%. However, if Britannia is to advance
Prime Minister May must be under no illusions about the culture, thinking, and
groups she must either change or face down if Britannia is truly to advance.
Who are they?

Scottish secessionists: The Scottish Neverendum Party (SNP)
represents a clear and present danger to the Union because they will use any excuse
to secede. Secession is, after all, why they exist. Prime Minister May must
face them down, not least by pointing out the inconsistencies in their case,
and not just about Scotland’s economic fundamentals. The SNP fought the 2014
independence referendum with a clear understanding that if they succeeded they
would take Scotland out of the EU. Now, they are claiming to fight for
independence to keep Scotland in the EU. Worse, by campaigning in the UK-wide Brexit
referendum SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon legitimised the vote as a UK-wide vote.
To claim now it legitimises her call for a second independence neverendum
might be clever politics, it is also rank hypocrisy. A renewed clash over the future of Britain is now inevitable.

Remoaners and lawyers: My on balance preference was for Britain to
remain in the EU. However, I am a democrat and accept the decision of a
majority of the British people to quit, as I would have accepted the settled
will of the Scottish people had they voted to quit the UK in the 2014
once-in-a-generation referendum. Efforts by those on the losing side to change
the result by legal hook or political crook are appalling. If they succeed democracy
will be well and truly dead in the UK, to be replaced by legal fiat. This is a battle
that has been long in the making between Parliament and a section of the
judiciary who routinely seek to use European law to erode parliamentary
sovereignty. Brexit must indeed mean Brexit, and democracy must indeed mean
democracy.

Little Britons: Some of the post-Brexit commentary about a post-EU Britain
demonstrates the extent to which many in London do not understand power. One of
my critiques of the EU has been the extent to which Brussels has hastened the
retreat of many Europeans from power in favour of often vague, vacuous, dangerously
self-defeating and self-deluding ‘values’. Too often the EU has failed to aggregate
the power of its member-states into strategic influence and effect. This has
contributed markedly to the culture of decline management one finds at the
heart of Westminster and Whitehall, and which has done so much damage to Britain
and its strategic brand.

Little Englanders: Then there are triumphant little Englanders, some
of whom seem to think a post-Brexit Britain is on the verge of rebuilding the British
Empire. There are signs that the clunkily-named (I think I named it!) world Anglosphere
is beginning to swing behind Britain. However, the Anglosphere must not be seen
as an alternative to engagement with Europe. Little Englanders are particularly
deluded over immigration. Britain’s power is established on its facility and
ability as a trading nation. Given the link between trade and the free-ish movement
of peoples the only real choice, and by extension control, post-Brexit Britain will
have over immigration is from whence it comes and for what purpose. The real choice
Britain faces in this world is between wealth and power or poverty and
weakness.

Vengeful Europeans: There are those in Europe, particularly in the Élysee
Palace it would appear, who want Britain ‘punished’ for exercising democracy. They
and their ilk should be left under no illusion that whatever the domestic pressures
they face a pragmatic and respectful Brexit is in the best interests of all. The
alternative is the mutual impoverishment and weakening of the democracies, and
the strengthening of real adversaries and enemies. Thankfully, Chancellor
Merkel appears to understand that, even if she will do all she can to protect
German interests during the Brexit negotiations.

Economists: …because all things being equal they do not understand
power and are wrong about everything.

The May Strategic Agenda: Prime Minister May must now rebuild the
very idea of Britain and build it on power fundamentals. Britain is the world’s
fifth biggest economy and the world’s fourth biggest defence spender. Britain
is not the small island that some would have it and in any case power not geography
(Mackinder or no!) dictates influence and effect. From a defence-strategic
viewpoint the British armed forces will have a particularly important role to
play in rebuilding the idea of Britain. This is not because the future Britain
will be militaristic or nationalistic, heaven forbid! However, a country needs
a sense of moderate patriotism to function and such patriotism must identify
with a legitimate strategic brand that is built on power. And, given the dangerous
world into which Britain is moving the armed forces must combine with Britain’s
amazing soft power to communicate to the world British strength and stability. When
Britain’s strategic brand is strong, Britain and the world are a safer place.

To succeed Prime Minister May will need to combine strategic imagination, purpose and resolution. For too long the very idea of
Britain has been suborned by political correctness, nationalist secessionists, those
for whom the very idea of country is bad, nostalgic idiots, and short-termist, visionless
politicians who have allowed the very idea of Britain to whither, and for whom Britain
is mere balance-sheet. From the conversations I have had it was precisely such
views of Britain that were rejected by the pragmatic and informed many in my
native Yorkshire, the heartland of the Great Revolt.

Churchill finished his VE Day
broadcast with a call to peaceful arms that is no less relevant today. “We must
now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task both at
home and abroad. Advance Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save
the King!”

Monday, 18 July 2016

“My people are going to
learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth, and the teachings of
science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can
follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reasons or
bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men”.

Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, Founder and First President of the Turkish Republic

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 July. Two
coups took place in Turkey this past weekend. The first coup was an exercise in
military incompetence. The second coup is still underway and as coups go it is
being exercised both brilliantly and ruthlessly. As a friend of Turkey both coups
sadden me, not only because 265 people were killed and over 1400 wounded, but Turkey
this weekend could well have ceased to be a strong Western state, and instead become
a weak Middle Eastern potentate. With the arrest of over 6000 people, some 3000
of them members of the judiciary, this weekend could also mark the final, irrevocable
eclipse of President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s visionary 1923 constitution and
his dream of a secular Turkish state which he crafted from the wreckage of the
Ottoman Empire and which sought to uphold the rights of all Turkish citizens.

A few years back I stood on the towering
spot where Ataturk had commanded his troops during his brilliant defence of
Gallipoli just over a century ago. His eyes were cast to the West even as he
defended his country against the forces of France and the British Empire. Strategically,
Turkey is just as important now as it was back then. Indeed, Turkey is the pivotal
power, sitting at the strategic crux of east and west, north and south.

For many years I have cut
President Erdogan political slack. Turkey is not a Western European state and governing
Turkey has never been easy, and in any case the rest of Europe has been utterly
duplicitous in its dealings with Ankara. For years the EU has pretended to
promise eventual Turkey membership, and Turkey has pretended to believe the EU.
Now, incompetent elements of the Turkish armed forces have helped President
Erdogan step over the threshold between democracy and autocracy upon which he
has been standing.

The irony is that President
Erdogan can also legitimately wrap himself in Ataturk’s flag in the wake of the
coup and claim he is protecting the very Kemalist constitution he could well
now destroy. as Turkey shifts from parliamentary democracy to presidential fiat.
A kind of ‘sovereign democracy’ beloved of the likes of Russia’s President
Putin.

So, how could this happen? The failed
military coup followed the same pattern as the ‘interventions’ by the Army in
1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997, all of which were designed to restore Ataturk’s order.
It is also hard to avoid the conclusion that that elements within the officer
corps were goaded into this coup. For months now Army officers have been
complaining that President Erdogan was weakening the Army, purging secular
officers, and side-lining the Army from its self-appointed role as ‘guardians’
of Ataturk’s republic. Suspiciously President Erdogan issued several warnings
that some form of coup was imminent.

What are the implications for
Turkey? Contemporary Turkey is split roughly three ways between a
European-leaning, more liberal west, a conservative heartland from which
President Erdogan draws much of his support, and the Kurds in the south and
east of the country. The speed with which President Erdogan has moved to round
up opponents has the feel of a pre-planned operation. In the short-term there
is no doubt Erdogan’s power will be further enhanced. However, as it becomes
clear that the Turkish Republic is slipping into a kind of democratic
dictatorship wrapped in a pale green cloaks of Islamism then the acute divisions
within the country will likely become more evident. At the very least tensions
between President Erdogan’s APK government and the Kurdish PKK will increase.

The implications for the West are
equally profound. Turkey has the second largest army in NATO. It is an army
that has been weakened, and will be further weakened, as President Erdogan purges
any elements in the officer corps he suspects of complicity in this plot. Worse,
a powerful cornerstone of European security has been weakened and will continue
to be weak for some time to come. This raises a host of questions about the viability
of the West’s anti-ISIS and anti-Assad strategies. Operations against ISIS have
already been disrupted with the temporary closure of the vital Incirlik air
base this weekend. There are also now real questions as to the willingness of
Turkey to assist in managing the migrant flows from the Levant to Europe. Certainly,
much will now depend on the tone and tenor of criticism from a Europe, not a
few leaders of which probably hoped the coup might succeed, if it had led to a
more amenable Turkish leader with which to deal.

Therefore, Turkey’s two coup
weekend has winners and losers. The winners are President Putin’s Russia and
ISIS as both benefit from a divided Turkey no longer anchored as firmly in the
West as it was even last week. The loser is the West, as it could well be that
Turkey ceased to be a member this past weekend. At the very least there will need
to be a lot of patient and clever diplomacy to keep Turkey looking westwards.

However, the biggest loser will
be democracy and the Turkish people. Indeed, Turkey’s Great Man must be
spinning in his magnificent marble tomb in Ankara this morning. As President
Ataturk once said, “Victory is for those who can say “victory is mine!” Success
is for those who can begin saying “I will succeed” and say “I have succeeded”
in the end”.

Wednesday, 13 July 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 July.
Geopolitics is a permanent power struggle between symmetry and asymmetry. There
is certainly a certain symmetry in the delicious coincidence of the launch of
the new EU Global Strategy and the
rejection yesterday in The Hague by the UN’s Permanent Court of Arbitration of
China’s feisty claim to some three million square kilometres of the South China
Sea, through which some $5 trillion of trade passes every year, and under which
huge oil and gas resources are believed to be oozing and bubbling invitingly
away.

Whereas Globstrat is the usual blah blah that passes for ‘strategy’ in the
EU, China’s quick denunciation of The Hague judgement, and de facto rejection of the United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS), suggests a twenty-first century that could be every bit as
cold as the waters Beijing claims as its own. For Europeans events in the South
China Sea are equally momentous and beg THE geopolitical question; are pious
words ever going to be matched by real power? It is EU yawn versus Chinese brawn.

China has certainly acquired a
lot of brawn of late. In 2016 China will increase its defence expenditure by 8%
to around $150 billion. Paradoxically, an 8% increase in Chinese defence expenditure
is the lowest such percentage increase since 1989. Between 1989 and 2015 the Chinese defence
budget grew year-on-year by more than 10%. The key stat is this; in a
conservative estimate CNN values the size of the US economy in 2016 at $19
trillion, with the Chinese economy worth some $12 trillion. The US will spend
some 3.4% of GDP on defence in 2016, with the Chinese spending 8%. Therefore,
one has only to do the ‘math’, as the Yanks say, to realise the trouble that
could well lie not too far ahead.

Furthermore, whilst Chinese
defence expenditure would appear to be far below 2016 US defence expenditure of $573 billion, the gap is not as wide as it appears. First, the US must
spread its forces and resources across the globe; China concentrates its
military power by and large on East Asia. Second, declared Chinese defence
expenditure is believed to be far lower than the actual amount Beijing invests in ‘defence’,
particularly in defence research and development. Third, China would appear to
get more ‘yang’ for each yuan invested, than the Americans get bang for each
buck. Pork barrel politics and sequestration have done terrible damage to the
US military.

The EU? Lots of yawn. In 2016 EU
members will spend some $200 billion. However, that expenditure is badly
fractured and generates nothing like the same bang for each euro/pound etc.,
spent as either the Americans or the Chinese. Moreover, the British 25% of EU defence
expenditure is about to quit the Union, taking with it some 40% of defence
research and technology investment.

Taken together Globstrat and The Hague judgement
suggest a geopolitical tipping point which could point to either peace…or war. Read
the official Chinese government statement on The Hague judgement and it is uncompromising.
However, read between the lines and Beijing clearly leaves some wriggle room
for a negotiated settlement with Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and
Vietnam all of which contest the Chinese claim. However, if China continues to
turn the series of reefs it has seized of late into military bases, and then
moves to exclude the air and sea forces of other states from the South China
Sea, then Beijing will be set irrevocably on a collision course with other
powers, most notably the United States.

As for the EU if ‘discourse’ is not
matched by force and resource then Globstrat
will be yet another one of those European exercises in empty geopolitics that
sooner or later collapses under the weight of the very meaningless acronyms it generates. If the EU
strategy was indeed ‘global’ EU foreign and security policy ‘supremo’ Federica
Mogherini would be meeting with European leaders this morning to consider the EU’s position
on the South China Sea, and what support Europeans could offer the democracies
in the region. There will of course be a statement, but the very idea of ‘EU
action’ is absurd, which is precisely why the EU is NOT a global actor.

Globstrat will certainly spawn a lot of talk.
Endless Brussels meetings of endlessly ambitious young think-tankers will now ensue in which the illuminati try endlessly to find signs of grand substance where in
fact there is none. Globstrat will be
minutely examined with each word parsed for signs of life in the corpse that is
Europe’s ‘strategic culture’. Brexit happened because too many in Brussels and
elsewhere refused to heed warnings of impending disaster, choosing instead to shoot
the messenger. If Europeans continue to merely talk about geopolitics,
but not act on them, a far greater disaster awaits

However, China too must also face realities which begs another question; why is China so determined to control the South China Sea? Beijing believes that only a state with access to assured natural resources can assure power and influence in the twenty-first century. The Communist Party believes the only way to maintain power is to honour the post-Tiananmen 'contract' by which the Party retains unquestioned power, in return for guaranteeing improving living standards. That 'contract' can only be honoured if China controls 'strategic' resources.

Beijing has a choice to make. China is not a liberal democracy, but nor
is President Xi a President Putin, for all the former’s strong ties with the
People’s Liberation Army. For the past thirty years China has done well by
supporting and often exploiting the ‘rules’ of the international system.
However, China’s extra-sovereign behaviour and its ridiculous ‘historical’
claim to almost the entirety of the South China Sea, based on no more than a
spurious nine-dash line on a strange map that appeared from nowhere in the
1940s, suggests a China for which might is fast becoming right, even if for China it is patently
wrong.

China must seek a negotiated
settlement to the South China Sea dispute for such a settlement is in the
Chinese national interest and would demonstrate the real leadership to which China rightly aspires. As for Mrs Mogherini and her Globstrat at some point she will be forced to answer the same
question Stalin once asked of the Vatican; how many divisions does it have?

Thursday, 7 July 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 July. It
is 12 volumes and 2.6 million words in length and took 7 years to prepare. Yesterday
afternoon I spent reading the 150 pages of the Executive Summary of Sir John
Chilcot’s magnus opus The Iraq Enquiry.
The strategic implications of what is a damning report into Tony Blair’s
leadership of Britain at the time of the 2003 Iraq War are profound. Indeed,
given the report’s condemnation (not too strong a word) of the failings of
Britain’s political, intelligence, and military elites Chilcot brings into
question the very utility in any circumstances of Western intervention in the
Middle East and elsewhere. Indeed, Chilcot begs a question that the good knight
himself does not answer; how do western states deal with the very real threats
that do emanate from such places? The
West intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq and stayed; the result was disaster.
The West intervened in Libya but did not stay; the result was disaster. The
West did not really intervene in Syria; the result was disaster.

In recent (and not so recent
history) few such Western efforts to shape the Middle East have achieved their
stated objectives. Indeed, in what is
now a history of ill-considered consequences there is a certain tragic symmetry
in the fact that the July 2016 Chilcot Report was published a century after the
May 1916 Sykes-Picot Accord, which led to the creation of Iraq and so many other
troubled Middle Eastern states.

Chilcot underpins the need for
sound strategic judgement that was lacking at times in the post 911 political
environment. Chilcot reinforces the need for political leaders to understand
what is possible on the ground. For example, there is a marked contrast between
the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Gulf War. Whereas the 1991 war was undertaken to
uphold the Middle East state structure, the 2003 war set out to change the very
nature of the Middle Eastern state. Powerful unintended consequences ensued
because powerful unwanted forces were unleashed because powerful people,
especially in Washington, refused to confront powerful realities. Indeed, Iraq was too often more about politics
inside the Beltway, rather than security outside of it.

Chilcot firmly asserts that if such
an intervention is to be launched it must be properly planned, resourced and
forced. None of the West’s post-911 interventions have been properly planned
and all have failed, including Afghanistan. In fact, sound planning was indeed undertaken
for post-‘conflict’ Iraq by the State Department’s ‘Iraq Shack’. However,
President George W. Bush took responsibility for such planning away from State because
he did not trust it and handed it to the Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, which had
no experience of such work. The subsequent Coalition Provisional Authority was
a disaster.

Chilcot also warns of the dangers
of politicising intelligence. Tony Blair had a whole raft of reasons for
wanting to stay close to Bush, not least maintaining US support for the peace
process in Northern Ireland. However, his lack of influence in the Bush White
House was in stark contrast to his desperate need to remain close to Bush. This
helped lead Blair to interpret the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee
(JIC) purely through the lens of the transatlantic security relationship rather
than wider British interests. It is certainly to the chagrin if not the shame
of the elite British civil service that so many did not challenge the Downing
Street clique, most notably the British Intelligence services. Iraq revealed
the politicisation of the once masterful British civil service which continues
to this day, and which even today too often prevents truth being spoken to
irresponsible power.

Chilcot is also clear about British
military failure. The British Army was humiliated in Iraq, a humiliation that
perhaps marked the beginning of the end of the special ‘Special’ US-UK
Relationship. The gap between the military power Britain’s leaders said Britain
could exert in support of the US soon proved to be false, even though the
Americans must also take a lot of the blame for going into Iraq before all the
forces and resources necessary to succeed were in place. Britain’s influence in
Washington was sorely damaged as a result, and has never really recovered.

One has only to look at the
Defence Planning Assumptions in the UK’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review to
understand that putting a front-line force in excess of 40,000 troops into Iraq
would break the troop bank, to then ‘plan’ in 2006 to go to Afghanistan as well
before the mission in Basra was complete was dangerous military nonsense. The
Defence Logistics Organisation effectively collapsed in 2003. That is why the
occupation force was far smaller than the invasion force and why good military
commanders and their civilian counterparts struggled to create a secure space
in which stabilisation and reconstruction could take place. However, Britain’s
top military commanders at the time must also shoulder some of the blame because
they went into Iraq not to succeed but to get out as quickly as possible.

The failure in Iraq may have also
marked the beginning of the end of Britain’s membership of the EU. After
championing Britain’s future in the EU, and being seen as a de facto leader by
many of the new Central and European members of an enlarged EU, Blair’s failure
effectively ended Britain’s influence in the EU and ceded leadership to Germany.
The opposition of France and Germany to the war proved to be correct,
although the motivations of President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder were
complex. The subsequent split between
Britain on one side, and France and Germany on another, has never really healed
and the slide towards Brexit accelerated.

Chilcot addresses another issue –
method. In 2008 I wrote two reports following a fact-finding visit to
Afghanistan. Both reports highlighted the same problems of commission and omission.
Put simply, if a Western state or group of states is going to intervene in
places like Afghanistan or Iraq it is vital the ‘human terrain’ is properly
understood and all national and international means – civil and military – are applied
carefully and rigorously to generate outcomes that give the inhabitants hope of
positive change. This all-important unity of effort and purpose backed up by
sufficient forces and resources was never achieved in either country leaving
military commanders to try and close an impossible gap between intent,
capability and capacity.

There is also a dangerous
flip-side to Chilcot. In the wake of Iraq Britain steadily lost strategic
self-confidence, the elite belief in Britain as a power collapsed, and with it
there was a loss of British popular faith in both US leadership and in Britain’s
own Establishment. It also demonstrated the extent to which keeping on the right
side of a poorly-led Washington led Blair and his close clique to lose the
strategic plot as the relationship between ends, ways and means descended into
political fantasy.

At the start of this piece I
raised a question implicit in Chilcot about the very principle of armed
intervention; how do western states deal with the very real threats that do emanate
from such places? A hard truth is that
there will be occasions in future when such interventions will sadly be
necessary. The world is a dangerous place. If Chilcot leads to improved
strategic judgement, better understanding of the challenge, the proper political
use of intelligence, the re-establishment of appropriate distance between
politicians and civil servants, and the closing of the gap between the roles
and missions political leaders expect of armed forces, and the forces and
resources needed to do the job asked of them, then all well and good. If, on
the other hand, Chilcot leads British and other Western political leaders to
conclude that they never want to find themselves alongside Blair facing a
political, media and public opinion ‘lynching’ and abandon the very idea of
military interventions in extremis
then the post-Chilcot world is suddenly more not less dangerous. Reading
Chilcot I was struck at times just how political the report is.

Ultimately, Tony Blair achieved
the exact opposite of what he said he set out to achieve in Iraq and went to
war on a false premise. Over 150,000
Iraqis died, together with some 179 British military personnel, whilst over one
million people were displaced. Blair and the Britain he led must bear full responsibility
such for failure. However, the real blame ultimately lies with President George
W. Bush and Messrs Cheney and Rumsfeld who at the time confused the need for
revenge and ideological fervour for sound statecraft. The threshold for Western military intervention
in the Middle East or anywhere must be necessarily high. Chilcot may now have
set that threshold impossibly high.

Monday, 4 July 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 4 July. On
the eve of the NATO Warsaw Summit it is my honour to announce the publication of my latest hard-hitting report: NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016: Twenty Vital Defence Planning and Related
Questions the NATO Warsaw Summit Should Address…but will probably not.

Launched last week in Warsaw for
FWPN the report considers the questions the
political leaders of the Alliance should answer given the threats posed to NATO
and in light of Brexit:

Is
NATO fit for twenty-first century purpose?Who
has real power?What
if war breaks out in Europe?Just
how dangerous is Russia?Can
NATO defend itself?Is
Europe serious about defence?Is the
NATO defence and deterrence posture credible?Do
political NATO and military NATO agree about war?Can
Central Europeans influence Europe’s defence?Is the
balance of power in NATO Europe shifting?What
is the EU planning?What
are the strategic implications of Brexit?Can Germany
lead European defence?Would
a European Defence Union work?Are
NATO and the EU compatible?Has
NATO the strategic imagination to fight a new war?Do
NATO Europe’s leaders have the political courage to think about war?What
price will the Americans demand?What
critical defence planning issues must Warsaw address?Is
NATO the enduring Alliance?

You can download the full report
for free via the Atlantic Treaty Association website:

Sunday, 3 July 2016

Dear All,Below is a segment from a paper I wrote for the French think tank Fondation de la Recherche Strategique in Paris in February....I told you so!

"It is the morning of 24th
June, 2016. Britain and the rest of Europe, indeed the rest of the world, are
coming to terms with the shock result of the Brexit referendum the night before.
By a majority of 52% to 48% the British people voted to quit the European
Union. Prime Minister David Cameron goes before the TV cameras to announce that
he has accepted the settled will of the British people. He takes full
responsibility for the result and announces that Britain will invoke Article 50
of the Treaty of European Union and begin the two-year ‘deaccession’ of the
United Kingdom from the European treaties and institutions. He also announces
his resignation forthwith as prime minister...

The rest of a shocked EU is faced
with a quandary. Conscious that on this grey June morning the EU’s erstwhile
second power might have set a dangerous precedent for withdrawal an emergency
EU summit is called. Reactions across Europe range from pleading with the
British people to think again, to outright condemnation of the British as ‘traitors’
to the very idea of a Europe Britain helped forge in blood. Quietly, some
hard-line Euro-federalists express satisfaction that political integration can
now proceed without the applied brake that London has come to represent for
decades.

Berlin and Paris are under no
illusions about the strategic and political implications of Britain’s split,
especially so as President Putin continues to exert pressure on Europe’s
eastern flank, and migrants continue to pour in from Europe’s southern flank.
Privately, Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande admit they should have
tried harder to bring Britain into the Franco-German directoire. Across the Atlantic a lame duck President Obama joins presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton to express regret having pushed hard for Britain to
remain within the EU. After all, Washington have long seen the British as a
strategic convenience and a tool to influence the EU. However, Obama also
expresses confidence that now the issue has been ‘settled’ the transatlantic
relationship in all of its myriad economic, social, political, and, of course,
military forms can move forward. Donald Trump, just anointed Republican
presidential nominee, says he really does not care, and that he will be happy
to work with Britain as president. Mischievously, President Putin congratulates
the British people for having chosen the path of ‘sovereignty’. In fact, for
all the concerned leaders Brexit is a leap into the political dark for no-one
knows what the strategic implications of Britain’s historic decision to quit EU
will be".

Not that I am gloating...the situation is far too serious for that. Well, just a little bit.

Friday, 1 July 2016

“The English generals
are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much
science as their officers and men had of courage and bravery. They are lions
led by donkeys”.

General Erich Ludendorff.

1 July, 2016. Zero Hour One Hundred Years plus Two. It was the bloodiest day
ever for the British Army. A century ago some 300 kilometres/190 miles to the
south of me the “big push” was underway. Twenty-nine British Army divisions
were advancing across no man’s land in the face of heavy machine gun, mortar,
infantry and artillery fire laid down by seven defending German divisions
across a 50 km/30 mile front. By Zero plus Five the British had taken some
55,000 casualties, of whom 20,000 were dead.

The reason for the Battle of the
Somme was the Battle of Verdun. By 1 July, 1916 the French Army had already been
fighting on the charnel fields of Verdun for 134 days. German commander General
Erich von Falkenhayn reportedly said his aim at Verdun was to bleed France
white. Between February and December 2016 the French Army would suffer up to
540,000 casualties, of whom some 150,000 would be killed.

The French commander-in-chief Marshal
Joffre pleaded with the British to launch a major offensive in the west to ease
the pressure on French lines at Verdun. Crucially, British commander-in-chief
General Sir Douglas Haig believed German forces had suffered sufficient
attrition at Verdun to believe a combined Anglo-French assault on the German
lines would succeed. Haig even believed it might be possible to enact a
complete breakthrough of German defences and commence a rout. The Somme area
was chosen for the offensive because it was where British and French forces
stood alongside each other.

Five days prior to the offensive
the British started an enormous artillery barrage that saw over one million
shells fired at the German defences right up until the commencement of the
advance. The fact that such a barrage could be mounted was proof the British
had overcome the crippling shortage of artillery shells from which the British
Army had suffered since the outbreak of war in August 1914.

The British offensive should have
succeeded, at least on paper. British forces enjoyed more than a three-to-one
superiority in men and materiel. However, the offensive failed. The reasons for
failure are manifold. However, in the
intervening century the myth of the Somme has become overpowering and made it
hard to discern fact from fiction.

The British Army at the Somme included
in its ranks a significant number of Kitchener’s New Army. This was a
newly-formed, ‘green’ (inexperienced) ‘citizen army’, which included the
Sheffield City Battalion, from my own home town, and which fought with
distinction on 1 July at Serre. However,
there were also a large number of battle-hardened British, Australian,
Canadian, New Zealand and other forces committed to the Somme offensive.

Marshal Joffre had promised the
British that the French force on Haig’s right flank would be equal in size to
that that of the British. However, by late June the French Army was simply unable
to put such a force into the line such was the pressure being exerted on them
by Falkenhayn at Verdun.

However, it was not green pal’s battalions or the French that did
for Haig’s Somme offensive. It was Haig himself who doomed the Somme offensive
to failure through bad strategy and over confidence. By committing to a front some 30 km/50 miles
wide the British force was spread far too thinly. The artillery barrage whilst
impressive did nothing like the damage expected to the well-engineered German
trenches and forewarned the enemy as to the scale and location of the
offensive. Cohesion between the British divisions, and communications between
high command and operational commanders was via a rudimentary command chain
that was unable to withstand the confusion of a dynamic offensive after so long
having been committed to a relatively static defence.

By November 18, 1916, when Haig
called off the offensive, the British had gained an area some 12 km/9 miles
deep and some 25 km/20 miles wide, but had suffered 623,907 casualties at a
rate of some 3000 casualties per day. However, German losses also numbered 465,000
casualties. Conscious that the German Army could not suffer such losses again
over the winter of 1916/1917 the Germans engineered the fearsome Hindenburg line behind the Somme battlefield
to which they retreated in February 2017. Crucially, the Somme offensive did
indeed help relieve pressure on the French Army at Verdun.

Lessons were learned from the
failed Somme offensive. In March 1918 Ludendorff launched Operation Michael, a last desperate attempt by the German High
Command to split British and French forces which were being reinforced daily by
the arrival of US forces. German Stormtroopers were unleashed across what had
been the old Somme battlefield. At first the British reeled back but crucially
did not break.

At the Battle of Amiens, which
commenced on 8 August, 1918, on what Ludendorff called the “black day of the
German Army”, an exhausted German force faced a new new All Arms assault by the British. Out of the mist an enormous
artillery barrage was unleashed, but this time British, Australian, Canadian,
Indian and New Zealand forces, supported by American and French forces, and all
under a ‘supreme’ unified command, advanced right behind the barrage employing
new flexible ‘grab and hold’ infantry tactics. The force was also supported by
a large number of tanks and massive air power.

Crucially, the assault took place
over a much narrower front than the Somme offensive enabling the British force to
punch through German lines. The German Army true to its tradition fought
bravely but as an offensive force it was broken at Amiens. German commanders of
a later generation studied the All Arms
Battle very closely, but they gave it another name – Blitzkrieg!

In memory of all the fallen on
all sides at the Battle of the Somme which began one hundred years ago today.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.